


Awake, arise, or be forever fallen

by HelgaHeason



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Background Destiel, F/M, Gay disaster Castiel Novak, I call it Goldhunter, I do not care what the CW says, I used BTS song lyrics in an SPN fic sue me, It's the Empty and Gabe is depressed, M/M, References to Depression, Songfic, Sort of like the start of Gabe and Jo, They're all dead and then they're not
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-14
Updated: 2021-01-14
Packaged: 2021-03-12 00:40:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28751565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HelgaHeason/pseuds/HelgaHeason
Summary: Angels dream of their regrets, in the Empty.But what happens when something goes wrong, and they wake up?
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester, Gabriel/Jo Harvelle
Kudos: 7





	Awake, arise, or be forever fallen

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea where this fic came from, nor what it actually ended up being, but here it is.  
> Can you tell from the tags that I might just be going mildly insane?
> 
> Warnings for depression (specifically Gabriel, I realise I wrote him as quite depressed, oops), death (all the angels are dead at first), mentions of torture, blood and bruising (the words are only used once each and are over with quickly), and injury detail at the end (on Jo, merely outlining her scars from the hellhounds - it’s over with quickly).
> 
> And with all that said...
> 
> Without further ado, enjoy!

The Empty is usually still, quiet, and suffocatingly so.  
But not today - today, there’s something there.  
_There is something there_. There’s something in the darkness - he’s not alone here, and he doesn’t know what’s worse; that he’s alone and trapped in the inescapable Empty, or that someone else will have to suffer the same.  
It’s bad enough that he’s awake.  
It’s bad enough that he can’t just succumb to the oh-so-alluring call of nightmarish sleep, plagued by nightmares and regrets.  
It’s bad enough that the Empty keeps reminding him that he’s trapped and there’s absolutely shit all he can do to escape.

**_Even if I try to flee, I’m back into the maw_ **

It feels worse than living.  
Somehow.  
And that says a lot, given living consisted of running from anything and everything, running to nothing; to when time runs out and he’s the only one left.  
How can death feel worse than living?  
It’s the torture, he supposes; his regrets weighing down on him like the stones that weigh down the backs of the prideful.  
Perhaps his regrets are his stone.  
But all those sins, they’re normal emotions.  
People feel them all the time.  
It’s using them wrongly or taking advantage of them that actually constitute as sinful, or so Raphael said once.  
He can’t remember.

**_No song affects me anymore_ **

In the darkness, his companion shifts, struggling between recklessly awakening and staying down like the good little soldier they were always meant to be.  
Daddy’s blunt instrument.  
Fuck.  
That could describe nearly all of the angels in the garrison, himself included - though he was somewhat of an anomaly, given he left Heaven and adamantly refused to go back.  
And didn’t it feel good to piss off his Father?  
He watches as his companion finally chooses, finally awakes, finally gasps as air doesn’t quite fill their borrowed lungs (but makes a reasonable attempt), and wants to cry when he realises who it is.  
The one angel, the one sibling he had whom his Father could never control.  
The one off the line with a crack in his chassis.  
The one who dared to say ‘no’.

**_Crying out a silent cry_ **

It’s Cassiel.  
His baby brother’s hazy, disoriented, borrowed blue eyes blink in the darkness and he feels his heart break.  
That’s the thing he’s learnt about life - better to have a heart and care too much, than to have no heart at all.  
Because if you don’t have a heart, you can’t feel when it’s broken.  
A silent surrender shudders through his spine, and something akin to resolve settles in his eyes.  
Cassiel’s going to hate him for this, but it’s better than being awake.

**_An ocean with all light silenced shut_ **

He isn’t entirely sure what compels him to do it in this way, but he finds himself singing an old Enochian lullaby - one he used to sing to Cassiel when he was a fledgling, and Samandriel too at times.  
It’s a somewhat sorrowful song, mourning and scared.  
He doesn’t know why it’s scared, because it became a thing back in the glory days of Heaven, when everyone still got along.  
Although, he supposes, Chuck was always a problem.  
The reason they’re all good little soldiers, all scarred and exhausted beyond belief, comes from how Chuck brought them up.  
He can’t feel anything but pain when he remembers what it was like to fail a duty.  
For a being that was never supposed to be able to feel emotions, he feels too little and altogether far too much at the same time.  
People raise whole rebellions through song, he remembers.  
_No more_ , he thinks. _No more_.

**_My wandering feet held in a rut_ **

No more regretting what was never his fault.  
No more wallowing in self-pity.  
No more letting his Father win.  
_No more_.

**_Every noise and sound’s been cut_ **

Cassiel’s eyes droop after a while, and his body lies flat against the floor, still and quiet.  
His heart breaks a little more, and he fights back the tears.  
Perhaps, in another life, there’s better outcomes for both of them.  
Perhaps, in another life, their Father cares.  
Perhaps it was his own delusions, but he had only ever wanted what was best for his siblings - he had only ever wanted peace.  
And he hadn’t seen it.  
None of them had.  
They were never meant to have a happy ending, he realises.  
None of them were.  
And he sinks down onto his elbows, and cries.

**_Killin’ me now, killin’ me now_ **

When he wakes again, Cassiel is already awake.  
Balthazar and Michael have joined them, awakened as well and just as confused as he knows he must look.  
Lucifer lingers in the corner, halfway hidden by the darkness of the Empty, looking weirdly remorseful.  
Samandriel’s somewhere, as is Crowley, he can tell.  
Rowena doesn’t seem to be anywhere, but he doesn’t quite know what the rules are for witches.  
_Why are they all awake?_  
Balthazar looks absolutely exhausted, and Michael looks like he’s considering the sweet seduction of insanity.  
Only Cassiel looks hopeful.

**_Do you hear me, yeah_ **

It’s almost in an instant that he blinks and he’s no longer trapped in the darkness of the Empty.  
Through the bloodied haze of his bruised soul, he realises he’s alive once more, that his heart is thudding violently against his vessel’s chest; that he is _free_.  
_No more_.  
He can’t see Chuck anywhere, and he knows for a fact it wasn’t Him who raised him from the Empty - alongside everyone else, now that he looks around - but he’ll find Him someday.  
He might forgive sometimes, but by God, he doesn’t forget.  
Resolve settles in his eyes once more, and he thinks he knows now what he’s been running from.  
He thinks he knows now, as the sun glimmers gold in the sky, where he’s going to run to.  
He thinks he knows now what he’s going to do with his life.

**_Struggle, but it’s all ocean floor_ **

The bar is quiet, still, and named ‘the Roadhouse’ after the original bar that stood in its place, in honour of the previous owners, who’d been killed by hellhounds.  
A blonde woman with a very familiar looking set of scars on her neck - three perfect scratches, long claw marks - walks out of the back room, and asks him what he’d like to drink.  
He feels his heart stutter, and he hears himself stutter too, trembling - and the woman laughs a little.  
She asks for his name, saying he looks like he could be an angel, making him cough quietly.  
“Gabriel.” is all he says.  
“Jo.” the woman replies, with a wink, and she places his drink infront of him.  
It takes his brain a minute to catch up, but when it does, he manages a smile back.

**_Every moment becomes an eternity_ **

Later on, he notices an essay of a text from Dean Winchester (of all people), saying that he wasn’t ever going to ask for his blessing - not that he needed it, he said, because Chuck be damned if he didn’t eventually someday marry Cassiel with or without anyone’s permission - but that he was informing him that he’d reciprocated Cassiel’s feelings and gone “to literal Hell with it, marry me”.  
He laughs when he reads;  
_“I think I may have broken Cas, just a little, ‘cause he looked like his brain had short-circuited or something and he stuttered in what I’m guessing was Enochian for a full half-hour…”_  
He sends his congratulations, and looks back at Jo, who’s washing some of the glasses.  
He holds up his untouched drink to her, which she notices, and all he says is;  
“To new beginnings.”  
Jo smiles, and echoes the statement.

**_Feelin’ me now, feelin’ me now_ **

And maybe, just maybe, he finally knows where he is running to.  
Or has an idea, at least.

**_Do you hear me, yeah_ **

**Author's Note:**

> The song used was ‘Black Swan’, by BTS, and you can listen to it here:  
> [BTS - Black Swan](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lapF4DQPKQ)  
> The lyrics were translated from Korean.
> 
> The title is an episode title from the TV series, Shadowhunters.
> 
> I kinda don’t want to apologise for the tags, but I will anyway.  
> I’m very sorry for the trainwreck that is the tags.
> 
> This was written for the #TwitterVessels on Twitter, of which I am a member.
> 
> Gabriel deserved so much better.  
> He cared, and he had his heart broken, and he was killed off and forgotten.  
> So I wrote this to get him out of the Empty.
> 
> The bit about the stones weighing down the backs of the prideful comes from Dante’s Purgatorio, wherein the souls of the prideful are punished by bearing the weight of huge stones on their backs.
> 
> If you’ve made it here after all those notes, thank you for reading!
> 
> \- - -
> 
> I’m on Twitter and I take fic commissions, DM me here:  
> [Helga Heason](https://twitter.com/HelgaHeason)
> 
> Help support my work by buying me a coffee here:  
> [Helga Heason Ko-Fi](https://ko-fi.com/helgaheason)


End file.
